Ideal Dining Table for the Designer Mr. K

SMSM

Ideal Dining Table for the Designer Mr. K

2012
plastic food replicas and paint on wood tables
120 × 85 × 73 cm

Ideal Dining Table for the Designer Mr. K and Ideal Dining Table for the Designer Ms. R present “ideal” diets realized in the form of custom-made furniture completed with plastic food replicas. Based on profiles of existing designers, they will symbolically and visually realize the ideal diets, which are not easy to put into practice or sustain in the real lives of the designers. The diners will eat their own unorganized food alongside with the ideal food already on the tables, mistaking the ideal ones as real and vice versa. In doing so, they may take a look back on their lives and reflect on their negligence and haphazardness. Or, they might be able to get some relief while looking at the fake foods that are made only with plastic.

On one hand, the ideal dining tables are a work that tacitly indicates our contemporary obsession with health and food. On the other hand, however, it is a genuine attempt to contribute to the narrowing of the gap between the ideal presented by discourses on health and the exhausting lives of designers. Moreover, it takes the prevalence of manufactured goods that are represented by Ikea in the domestic space to an extreme, extending the notion of readymade from a tool on which we lay out food to the food itself.

Mr. K is a 34-year-old, self-employed graphic designer living and working in Seoul. He stands 176 cm and weighs 94 kg. He loves food, especially meat. He smokes 1 pack of cigarettes per day, and drinks at least once a week, about 7 glasses of soju each time. He does not exercise. He works 66 hours per week, usually sitting in front of his computer. He commutes to work by public transport. His monthly income is irregular, the average being 1.2 million wons. Standard weight for Mr. K’s height is 68.4 kg, which means his obesity is 137.4% (obese). The optimal calories per day for Mr. K (his actual weight [94] multiplied by the coefficient for obesity [25]) is 2,350 kcal.